Ten days in Greece: two islands, not four

A wide pedestrianised curve of paving running west under the south slope, with the rock above you the whole way and none of the crowd that is up on it.

Twenty minutes up a marked path through the pines from the west end of the street puts you level with the Acropolis, looking straight at its west face, with the port and the sea behind you.

Come down the north side and keep walking one neighbourhood further than the terraces with the view. That is where the price halves and the cooking improves.

Built in the 440s BC from the tribute of an empire, used as a church and then a mosque, and largely intact until 1687, when a Venetian shell found the gunpowder the Ottoman garrison had stored inside it.

On the south slope, on the same ticket, and usually empty. The plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were first performed here in front of an audience sitting on the hillside.

Ordinary neighbourhood tavernas two minutes behind the most visited site in Greece. Sit down properly; the afternoon is not going anywhere.

The top floor is a glass hall built to the exact size and compass bearing of the temple visible through the window, with the surviving sculpture set where it belongs and casts standing in for the pieces held in London. The ground floor is glass too, over the Roman streets found when they dug the foundations.

The civic centre of classical Athens, now a green space of cypresses and tortoises with the rock over your shoulder. On the ridge above it stands the Temple of Hephaestus, the most complete Greek temple anywhere, which survived by serving as a church for well over a thousand years.

The market Athens was given under Roman rule, five minutes east. Look for the Tower of the Winds, an octagonal marble tower with a carved wind god on each face, which worked as a sundial, a weathervane and a water clock at once.

Two streets north of the square, away from the rooftop terraces, prices halve and the souvlaki becomes a proper lunch.

The gold death masks from the shaft graves at Mycenae, the bronze god from Cape Artemision caught mid throw, the marble figurines that gave Cycladic art its name, and the frescoes lifted out of Akrotiri before the site was roofed. Two hours, upstairs first.

Around five and a half hours on the big ship, under four on a catamaran. Bags go on the car deck or in a rack; keep valuables with you and get up ten minutes before docking, because the ramp empties fast.

A marble doorframe six metres high standing alone on the islet of Palatia at the harbour mouth, all that was ever finished of a 6th century BC temple to Apollo. Walk out on the causeway an hour before sunset; the frame faces exactly the right way.

The walled town the Venetians built above the harbour in the early 13th century, when a Venetian adventurer made himself Duke of the whole archipelago. Still lived in, still entered through its gates, and one of very few medieval towns left in Greece.

One of the earliest Ionic temples anywhere, put up around 530 BC entirely out of Naxian marble and probably dedicated to Demeter. In the 6th century AD it was pulled down and a Christian basilica built out of the same stones on the same footprint; what stands now is a careful reassembly of both, alone in a field.

In Halki, the old commercial centre of the island, a family distillery going since 1896 that makes kitron from citron leaves. The still room is open as a small museum and the tasting at the end is the point of the visit.

Both villages have tavernas under plane trees serving what the island grows: potatoes, goat, and the hard graviera cheese Naxos is known for across Greece.

A low, whitewashed church on the road above Moni, and the most important Byzantine building on the island. Layers of wall painting survive inside, some of them very early indeed. It is often locked; there is usually a caretaker in the house alongside.

1,003 metres, and named for Zeus, who was supposedly brought up in a cave on the way. The standard route starts at the spring near Filoti and takes one and a half to two and a half hours each way over about six kilometres return. Take twice the water you think you need.

A kouros six and a half metres long, carved in the 7th century BC and left face up in the quarry where it broke, in an olive grove above the village. A second one lies not far away. Nobody supervises them; you walk up and stand next to a giant.

Agios Prokopios, Agia Anna and Plaka run one into the next south of Chora, and the further down you go the emptier it gets. Several of the beach tavernas do a very good early dinner.

Two hours or so on the slow boat, about an hour on the catamaran. Sit on the starboard side coming in: the approach along the outside of the caldera wall is the best view of the island you will get.

The wall paintings lifted out of the town under the ash at the southern end of the island: blue monkeys, boxing children, a fleet of ships in procession, all painted three and a half thousand years ago. One hour, five minutes from the bus station, and the right preparation for the site itself later in the week.

The blue dome and the three hanging bells on the caldera path fifteen minutes north of the town. The current church dates from 1757, on a site where earlier chapels were cut into the cliff before the cliff receded out from under them.

The summit of the active volcano, two kilometres across and entirely bare. A gravel path climbs to the crater rim at 130 metres past vents that still steam and smell of sulphur. The last eruption was in 1950 and the island is monitored constantly. Most boats continue to the hot spring off Palea Kameni afterwards.

About three hundred steps below Oia: a crescent of red cliff, a row of fish tavernas on the water and a swim off the rocks past the little chapel. Walk down rather than taking a donkey, and allow twenty five slow minutes to climb back.

The ruined fortress at the western tip of the village, built in the 15th century against pirates and flattened by the 1956 earthquake. It is the classic sunset spot and it is shoulder to shoulder in season, so come an hour early or watch from the path just short of it.

Excavation began in 1967 and turned up buildings three storeys high with their staircases, drains and storage jars in place. The whole site is under a canopy, which makes it the one archaeological visit on this trip you can do at midday.

Ten minutes' walk from the site gate, under cliffs of rust coloured rock, with sand ground out of the same material. More of a look than a swim: it is small, it fills up, and the loose rock above means the path closes after landslides. Check before you set off down.

The cooperative winery on the inland ridge above Pyrgos, with a terrace looking straight across the caldera. Tastings run through the afternoon and the guided tours need booking ahead. Assyrtiko is the grape to concentrate on.

A Venetian fort at the summit of the old capital, once the administrative centre of the island, now ruins you walk through with lanes of white houses spiralling below. Free, never crowded, and the highest inhabited point on Santorini.

The airport is fifteen minutes east of Pyrgos by road; buses go via Fira, so a taxi is worth it with luggage. Bag drop only opens two hours before departure and the terminal is very small.